Editor’s Note: This is the second part of a two-part TDS Strategy Memo, written by Andrew Levison. It presents an important perspective that extends the innovative analysis in the Center For American Progress’ recent report “The State of American Political Ideology 2009.
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Americans who endorse a seemingly incompatible combination of conservative and liberal-progressive ideas are not simply “confused”, “ambivalent”, or “inconsistent.” Many are expressing a coherent social ideology that Democrats need to better understand.
For most ordinary Americans, opinions about business, government and economic issues are not learned and mentally organized into the kinds of coherent ideological frameworks taught in freshman economics or political science classes. On the contrary, for most Americans many of their opinions about economic life are gradually built up out of daily experiences in the world of small and medium sized businesses and during real world interactions with bosses, customers, suppliers, co-workers, sub-contractors, city inspectors, bookkeepers and so on and through the informal exchange of opinions shared within the workplace.
As these individual experiences and conversations are gradually synthesized into more general attitudes, there are typically five distinct kinds of cognitive frameworks or schemas that develop (1) a specific cluster of opinions about what appear to be “facts” or “common sense” about business and economic life, (2) a cluster of opinions about various positive principles and values that are inculcated by the business world, (3) a cluster of opinions expressing generally positive generalizations about markets and business (4) a cluster of opinions about the limits of markets and the proper role of government and (5) a cluster of opinions about the role and values of the “rich and powerful”.
For most ordinary voters, these five cognitive frameworks or schemas operate largely independently of each other. There is little conscious examination or effort to insure consistency. Invoking one opinion within a particular cluster generally activates a number of other opinions within the same cluster but generally does not invoke the other cognitive frameworks related to economic life.

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Just about anyone interested in American politics will find Charlie Cook’s most recent ‘Off to the Races’ column at the National Journal of considerable interest. Cook works his wizardry, tapping the latest pollls, in a succinct, but convincing “it’s all about independents” argument. First the numbers:

President Obama’s job approval rating among Democrats in last month’s Pew polling was 88 percent, with just 27 percent of Republicans approving. The 61-point gap exceeds that of Presidents George W. Bush (51 points in March 2001), Bill Clinton (45 points in April 1993), George H.W. Bush (38 points in May 1989), Ronald Reagan (46 points in March 1981), Jimmy Carter (25 points in March 1977) and Richard Nixon (29 points in March 1969).* Partisanship is alive and well, even in the era of Obama.
An obvious way of measuring partisanship is in terms of the enormous gap between how die-hard Democrats and Republicans assess political leaders. In the case of President Obama, the difference was night and day in the March Pew poll. (He received a 57 percent approval rating among independents.) Obama got similar numbers in Gallup polling last week, with a 90 percent approval rating among Democrats, 27 percent among Republicans and 60 percent among independents, with a margin of error of +/- 2 percentage points.

On how the data plays out in congress:

…On one side, there are Democrats sticking with Obama at a very high rate, and on the other side, Republicans are staying with their leadership at a similarly high rate. Don’t lay all of this on Republicans; both sides are holding firm.
On the GOP side, many of the moderate and swing-district members who would be likely to stray from the party lost re-election in either 2006 or 2008. The remaining Republicans, who fundamentally disagree with much of what Obama and the Democrats are trying to do, are overwhelmingly from safe and very conservative districts.
Then there is the question of those Republicans who have fairly senior committee positions, and whether too much fraternization with the enemy could cost them their ranking slot. Given the magnitude of GOP losses in the last two elections, the remaining GOP members have little tolerance for cavorting with the opposition.

On Obama’s strategy going forward:

When it comes to Obama, however, it’s imperative that he keep his approval rating up among independents. With 36 percent of all adults last year identifying themselves as Democrats, he can have the enthusiastic support of every Democrat in the country and still have an approval rating that would be just a bit better than impeachment level. To keep his approval rating in the high 50s and low 60s, a level that maximizes his clout on Capitol Hill and helps him hold the political high ground, Obama needs strong support among independents as well.

For more insight into the growing clout of Independents and their impact on Democratic legislative strategy, Cook’s entire column merits a read.

Print Version
Editor’s Note: This TDS Strategy Memo, written by Andrew Levison, presents an important perspective that extends the innovative analysis in the Center For American Progress’ recent report “The State of American Political Ideology 2009.
The new report from the Center for American Progress, “The State of American Political Ideology 2009 provides a more finely crafted overall picture of the current balance between support for conservative and liberal-progressive principles in the American electorate than any recent study. As a result, it establishes a vital starting point for the development of progressive and Democratic strategy.
In each of four sections — the role of government, economic and domestic policy, cultural and social values and international affairs and national security — five questions express liberal-progressive principles in the most positive and affirmative way possible and five express conservative principles along similar lines. This extremely elegant methodology avoids many of the problems of inconsistent or incompatible question wording that often prevents meaningful comparison between opposing views.
The interpretation of the results is not, however, straightforward.
Looking at the 10 questions regarding attitudes toward government and the 10 covering economic and domestic policy, two conclusions are quickly apparent.
First, liberal-progressive principles do generally receive higher levels of agreement than conservative principles. The 5 liberal-progressive views regarding government garner an average level of agreement of about 69%, while the 5 conservative principles average support of about 53%. In the area of economic and domestic policy, the five progressive principles receive an average of 62% support while conservative principles receive about 53% support. Obviously questions can always be raised about particular survey questions, but the results are clearly quite striking.
Second, however, is the apparently illogical fact that both the liberal-progressive and conservative principles both receive over 50% support. A majority of the respondents to the survey expressed agreement with both major liberal-progressive principles and also major conservative principles.
One well-known explanation for this quite consistent trend – the appearance of support for both liberal and conservative views on surveys — is the notion that Americans tend to be “ideological conservatives” but “operational liberals” and indeed, the specific liberal-progressive principles in the CAP survey could possibly be argued to be marginally more concrete or program focused than the conservative principles.
But this is not a sufficient explanation. In fact, a number of the questions are quite directly contradictory. For example 73% of the respondents agreed that “Government regulations are necessary to keep business in check and protect workers and consumers” but 43% simultaneously agreed that “Government regulation of business does more harm than good.” Thus, in this case, almost 20% of the respondents agreed with both statements.
Again, 79% of the respondents agreed that “Government investments in education, infrastructure and science are necessary to insure America’s long term growth” while 61% agree that “Government spending is almost always wasteful and inefficient.” In this case, almost 40% of the respondents agreed with both statements.
This makes absolutely no sense if one assumes that the respondents were actually answering these questions on the basis of even the most minimally coherent liberal-progressive or conservative ideology. It is inconceivable that even a single one of the kind of people who attend the annual meetings of the liberal-progressive Campaign for America’s Future or the Conservative Political Action Council would ever reply to survey questions in this inconsistent way.
Two general kinds of explanations have been put forth to explain this kind of result.
One is that a certain significant portion of the electorate is fundamentally “confused”, “ambivalent”, or “inconsistent.” As a guide to political strategy, the conclusion that is often drawn from this is that these voters’ political opinions can safely be minimized or even completely disregarded because their attitudes are basically incoherent.
The second explanation is that many Americans are “bi-conceptuals” – that they have internalized two basically distinct and incompatible conservative and liberal-progressive ideologies, either one of which can be “invoked” or “activated” by triggering the appropriate memories and mental associations. As a guide to political strategy, this analysis is frequently interpreted as implying that it is simply the first or the strongest message that determines which mental schema will be activated in a given situation.
A significant fact about both explanations noted above is that they are drawn from only two of the social sciences – political science and cognitive linguistics. In contrast, analyses based on sociological and anthropological perspectives receive virtually no attention in the discussion of inconsistent voters and their implications for Democratic strategy.
The reason is that there is today a desperate—indeed absolutely appalling — lack of ethnographic field studies of “average Americans” – of working class people, of the inhabitants of small towns and red state voters. In fact, as a previous TDS Strategy White Paper – How Ethnographic Field Studies can contribute to the Development of Democratic Strategy– has documented, since 1985 serious ethnographic field studies have declined so drastically that in this area liberal-progressive and Democratic strategists are quite literally “flying blind.” There is simply no intellectually serious body of empirical research today that documents how the opinions that are collected over the phone in opinion polls are actually expressed in real-world settings, on the job or at home, with friends or neighbors and how such opinions change and evolve over extended periods of time.
This lack severely hampers the interpretation of the data in the CAP study. There are, in fact, two very important sociological insights that can substantially help to better understand the results and apply them to Democratic political strategy.

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Republican governors are term-limited in both Alabama and Georgia going into 2010. And despite Barack Obama’s poor performance in the former state and the recent Republican dominance in the latter, Democrats are hopeful about regaining the governorship in both states, where GOPers are in some disarray.
But the interesting thing is that the early front-runners for the Democratic gubernatorial nominations in Alabama and Georgia are African-Americans, as noted recently by Tom Baxter of the Southern Political Report.
Anyone who knows Alabama U.S. Rep. Artur Davis is aware that he’s been looking at a gubernatorial race for a good while. He formally entered the 2010 contest a couple of months ago, and with the recent decision of former Gov. Jim Folsom, Jr., against running, Davis is generally considered the primary front-runner, though Agriculture Commissioner Ronnie Sparks has now jumped in and state Sen. Roger Bedford may do so later.
Davis has built a definite reputation in national Democratic circles as a centrist, dating back to his original primary victory over civil rights veteran Earl Hilliard in 2002. But he was also an early supporter and close advisor to Barack Obama, with whom he has often been compared, in part due to their distinguished stints at Harvard Law School. His own early polls show him running even in general election trial heats against three possible Republican nominees, state Treasurer Kay Ivey, Alabama community college chancellor Bradley Byrne, and Troy University chancellor Jack Hawkins (Hawkins has since renounced intentions to run).
The unsettled nature of the Republican field in Alabama is best illustrated by fears that the infamous “Ten Commandments Judge,” Roy Moore, who fared poorly in a primary challenge to Gov. Bob Riley in 2006, could win the nomination this time around as the best known candidate. GOPers could have a messy and divisive primary.
Georgia has two African-American Democratic statewide elected officials, Attorney General Thurbert Baker and Labor Commissioner Michael Thurmond. Both have won three consecutive statewide elections during a period when Republicans have captured nearly every other statewide office while winning control of the legislature. Baker surprised many observers by announcing for governor last week. Once a floor leader in the legislature for Zell Miller, he’s a relatively quiet politician who has steadily built a reputation as a moderate-to-conservative with a law-and-order pedigree.
Baker’s statewide name ID and the importance of the African-American vote in Democratic primaries makes him the putative front-runner, but he faces a tough race and a probable runoff, even if former Gov. Roy Barnes doesn’t join the field. House Democratic Leader DuBose Porter announced his candidacy yesterday, and former Secretary of State, Labor Commissioner, and Adjutant General David Poythress has been campaigning for months.
Georgia Republicans, meanwhile, are sure to have a competitive and potentially nasty primary involving front-runner Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle (the guy who beat Ralph Reed in 2006), long-time Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine, and the relatively moderate Secretary of State, Karen Handel.
Those who think of the Deep South as little more than a bastion of Republicanism these days should keep an eye on these contests. They have the potential to upset not only partisan, but perhaps racial, stereotypes.

Are big protest demonstrations still effective? London Timesonline writer Phil Collins has a video clip giving the once-over-lightly treatment to the broader question of the influence of public demonstrations in a historical and contemporary context.
Collins takes a quick look at a half dozen successful and failed demos in the UK, The U.S. and India (with brief video of demos in other countries) and he makes a salient point about the G20 protests communicating “the vague sense that it’s against this whole set of global institutions, but no clear sense of what it is for.”
Collins argues that a protest does better when it “connects to a wider sense in the people that an injustice has been done” and that a successful protest “needs authorities on the verge of capitulation.” I’m not sure he’s right about the latter point. Sometimes a protest can serve a good purpose by publicizing an injustice, even when authorities are firmly opposed. You have to start somewhere. The 1999 “Battle of Seattle” demos, for example, didn’t achieve any concrete reforms, but they did help expand public awareness about the injustices of WTO trade policies.
Joshua Keating’s “Do Protests Ever Work” post at Foreign Policy‘s ‘Passport’ blog riffs on Collins’s clip, adding:

The fact that much of the street activism against the U.S. war in Iraq has been led by a group called Act Now to Stop War & End Racism is a good indication of why the antiwar movement has never really been a factor in debates over U.S. foreign policy. Rather than organizing around a specific political goal, ending the war, these marches tend to devolve into general lefty free-for-alls encompassing everything from Palestine to free trade the environment to capital punishment.

Keating is here talking more about large demonstrations than protest in general. For the most thorough discussion of forms of nonviolent protest available, check out Gene Sharp’s 3-volume “The Politics of Nonviolent Action” and other of his works on the topic (Sharp has been called “the Clauswitz of Nonviolence”).
As a veteran of many street demos going back to the sixties, including one that got me three days in the hoosegow, I have long had the feeling that too many 21st century demonstrations have a ‘kitchen sink’ quality, with a long, eye-glazing list of diverse grievances and no shortage of windy speakers to back them up. I also suspect that, instead of winning hearts and minds, spectators may be turned off by all of the negative yammering, which is what they see in the news clips, since the media rarely broadcast the positive vision part of the speeches.
So I say amen to Collins’s point about narrowing the focus, a principle which could be extended to political strategy in general, the failure of California’s ‘Big Green’ referendum in 1990 being an instructive case in point. The broader the legislative reform, the bigger the target for the oppos. I wonder if the same principle might apply to issues like health care reform strategy, as is suggested by the fate of ‘Hillarycare.’ Why not, for example, start with a bill that forbids all insurance companies from denying complete catastrophic coverage to their policy-holders and expanding Medicaid to provide it to those not covered by private insurers. Later for drugs, preventive care, Dental and myriad related concerns. Yes I know, it’s complicated and health issues are all interconnected. But “big package” reform is always problematic, and too often doomed by its very complexity. It’s difficult to build public support for reforms so broad and complex that the public doesn’t have time to read up about everything needed to form strong supportive opinions. Breaking reform packages down into separate one-at-a-time initiatives, on the other hand, builds the potential mass of active supporters.

Hilzoy, writing in the Washington Monthly, quotes an outraged commentary from respected legal analyst Scott Horton:

“Senate Republicans are now privately threatening to derail the confirmation of key Obama administration nominees for top legal positions by linking the votes to suppressing critical torture memos from the Bush era. A reliable Justice Department source advises me that Senate Republicans are planning to “go nuclear” over the nominations of Dawn Johnsen as chief of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) in the Department of Justice and Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh as State Department legal counsel if the torture documents are made public…It now appears that Republicans are seeking an Obama commitment to safeguard the Bush administration’s darkest secrets in exchange for letting these nominations go forward. (…)

Noting that this strategy dovetails with a conservative smear campaign against the two nominees, Hilzoy quite correctly calls it “completely appalling”. As he says:

The slurs on Koh and Johnsen are vile. They are widely respected legal scholars.
Besides the ugliness of the attacks, what the Republicans are doing is really unprecedented. First, the President has traditionally been given deference in the choice of his advisors. If some President wants to have someone in his cabinet, the presumption is that he ought to be able to do so, absent illegality or some sort of manifest incompetence. For the Republican Senators to hold these appointees up not for those reasons, but because they disagree with their policies, is just wrong; if this happened every time a new administration came into office, the opposition party would filibuster half the nominations and no one would never govern at all.
Second, what the Republicans are trying to do is to dictate to the President a matter that is purely his prerogative: deciding whether or not to unclassify documents. This is insane: it’s as though Obama threatened to withhold funding for the Senate unless Mitch McConnell fired some staffer he didn’t like.
And the combination — holding appointments hostage while trashing people’s reputations in order to keep Obama from making a decision he plainly has the right to make — is unconscionable.

It appears the Senate Republicans in question may have overestimated their latitude here, as evidenced by some great comments following Horton’s blog at The Daily Beast. As a commenter with the handle ‘Ultrahop’ responds:

Bring it on! Why back down? Let them filibuster. The public reaction would be rather decisive, I would think. Not every Senate Republican is going to stand on the side of torture. Does Olivia Snow believe in using torture? I think not.

And another who goes by ‘cbl99201’ adds:

I have to agree that these memoranda should see the light of day. This is one worth fighting over. Even Mcain would support it !!

And ‘pennsyskid2000’ notes perceptively:

I can’t wait to see attack ads against Repubs in 2010 for defending the Bush policy essentially advocating torture. I also don’t think filibustering will necessarily work in the long run. Senate Repub leader Bill Frist and other Repubs threatened to change the rules several years ago and require only a majority to confirm appointments, so the Dems can do the same and point to that Republican precedent to justify it. Once again, Republican short-sightedness will turn out to bite themselves in the ass.

Perhaps the best one comes from ‘fblevens’:

Full disclosure and impeachment are necessary only when sex acts are being performed within 20 feet of the Oval Office.
International war crimes? No worries.
Remarkable.

And Digby warns about the precedent that could be set:

Let’s hope Obama stands up to them. If he shows weakness with the Republicans on this, there will be no end to it when it comes to judicial nominees. And it is vitally important that Obama balances out the courts after the past 25 years of centrist to far right appointments.

Clearly President Obama is being tested by the more malevolent elements of the opposition. How he handles this one will indicate the limits of his tolerance for political blackmail — and perhaps his prospects in future confirmation battles.

The latest “death of newspapers” story is out of Boston, where the New York Times Company, owners of the venerable Boston Globe since 1993, is threatening to close down the paper unless unions make major concessions.
In another newspaper, the Washington Post, Michael Kinsley offers the ultimate ironic big picture comment about this trend, in the course of suggesting that we can do without the print dailies:

As many have pointed out, more people are spending more time reading news and analysis than ever before. They’re just doing it online. For centuries people valued the content of newspapers enough to pay what it cost to produce them (either directly or by patronizing advertisers). We’re in a transition, destination uncertain….But there is no reason to suppose that when the dust has settled, people will have lost their appetite for serious news when the only fundamental change is that producing and delivering that news has become cheaper.

Kinsley, of course, is rebutting an explanation for the newspaper crisis that’s a bit passe: that people aren’t interested in real news anymore. That was something you heard a lot back in the pre-internet days of the 1970s and 1980s, when it appeared that television was destroying the papers. Today the argument is mainly about news infrastructure and “freeriding”: that online news and commentary sources, and especially news aggregators, can’t and won’t make the investments necessary to replace the news organizations that they are “ripping off” and killing off.
I’m hardly an expert on this subject, but it’s worth noting that the traditional print news organizations have created many of their own problems, from bad business decisions that have nothing to do with journalism, to professional inbreeding and elitism, to very slow adjustments to technological changes and the quickening of news cycles. I’m old enough to remember when I got nearly all of my information from print newspapers and magazines (and from the library rather than Google!), but also old enough to witness the long steady decline of most regional newspapers into five-minute reads of yesterday’s stories, and old enough to resent the stranglehold on political interpretation once maintained by a small handful of Bigfoot Journalists. The Washington Post used to get a lot of us folks out in the boondocks to pay a hefty fee to receive a “national weekly edition” in themail. It still exists, though I don’t know how many people still fish in for a subscription. Even if I thought it were possible, I wouldn’t want to go back to the days when well-produced “news” was old, slow and expensive.
You’d have to assume that before long online advertising will evolve in a way that will enable it to pay most of the freight for online journalism, accompanied by new forms of cooperative newsgathering that will enable the coverage of international and specialty subjects. It’s less clear what will happen to the journalistic guild, with competition from non-guild-members now so prevalent. I once tried to make a lateral career transfer from government service to editorial writing for a small daily paper which was advertising for some help, and was quickly informed that such positions were the rabbits that kept underpaid reporters running around the track for so many years, so nobody without a journalism degree and experience as an ink-stained wretch, regardless of writing skill or substantive expertise, need apply. So the oft-cited grand traditions of the Fourth Estate aren’t always about excellence or ethics.
Before too long, we may look back at today’s MSM as anomalous and wonder why anyone ever thought it was a good idea to set up news monopolies run by corporate oligarchs and staffed by trained and accredited serfs. But the transition to the shape of things to come is going to be painful and messy.

One of the most imteresting aspects of last week’s Iowa Supreme Court decision striking down a statutory ban on same-sex marriage in that state was what didn’t happen: a big backlash that sent Democratic politicians running for the hills.
That would have likely happened just a few years ago, at the time when even quite progressive Democrats from “blue states” generally followed the “yes to civil unions, no to marriage” approach, while many Democrats in politically competitive states took an even harder anti-gay-marriage posture.
Contrast that to the joint statement put on Friday by Iowa’s Democratic state legislative leaders, Sen. Majority Leader Mike Gronstal and House Speaker Pat Murphy:

Thanks to today’s decision, Iowa continues to be a leader in guaranteeing all of our citizens’ equal rights.
The court has ruled today that when two Iowans promise to share their lives together, state law will respect that commitment, regardless of whether the couple is gay or straight.
When all is said and done, we believe the only lasting question about today’s events will be why it took us so long. It is a tough question to answer because treating everyone fairly is really a matter of Iowa common sense and Iowa common decency.
Today, the Iowa Supreme Court has reaffirmed those Iowa values by ruling that gay and lesbian Iowans have all the same rights and responsibilities of citizenship as any other Iowan.

Desmoinesdem at Bleeding Heartland has a roundup of other immediate Iowa Democratic reactions to the decision, and they are generally very positive.
And even Iowa Republicans had to rouse themselves to get upset. Just prior to the decision, when asked how the legislature might respond if the marriage ban were struck down, House GOP leader Kraig Paulson basically said they had better things to spend their time on, like the budget and the economy, referring to same-sex marriage as a “side issue.” Conservative activists weren’t real happy with that, so now GOP leaders are dutifully putting out statements of outrage and resolve.
The most notable reaction in the Des Moines Register, the state’s dominant media presence, was a Sunday article entitled: “Marriage Ruling May Boost Iowa Economy,” featuring more quotes from wedding plannings and tourism experts than from angry evangelical ministers.
What seems to have happened in the last few years, in Iowa as elsewhere, is that the question for politically and ideologically moderate voters on same-sex marriage has changed from “Why?” to “Why Not?” And that change in turn almost certainly reflects the lack of impact–other than images of smiling, happy couples–in states that have already legalized gay and lesbian marriages.
The trend in public opinion in favor of same-sex marriage availability is so strong that Nate Silver of Fivethirtyeight.com has done a regression analysis that predicts when majority opinion in each state will reach that position in the future. He lists ten states as already in that category, with 13 more joining it by 2012, and even Mississippi coming along, as the last holdout, by 2024.
Cultural conservatives may continue to scream about “judicial activism” and usurpation of popular rights on this issue, but the ground is moving beneath their feet. And we’ve already reached the point where in large swaths of the country, opposition to same-sex marriage as a powerful conservative “wedge issue” is dead, thank God.
UPCATEGORY: Democratic Strategist

One aspect of yesterday’s budget votes that’s drawing a lot of attention is the fact that Evan Bayh joined Ben Nelson as one of the only two Senate Democrats to vote against the leadership-sponsored resolutions (and for, BTW, an alternative offered by Republican Sen. Mike Johanns).
Nelson’s vote was no surprise; he’s always voted this way, and he’s from Nebraska. But Bayh’s another matter–a fairly senior senator with a safe seat, in a state carried by Obama, and a Democrat who was apparently on the short list to become Obama’s running-mate last year. Because of his still-relatively-young age and his vote-gathering prowess, Bayh’s also been mentioned now and then as a future presidential candidate, and tested the waters pretty thoroughly going into 2008. Ezra Klein dug around in Bayh’s voting record today, and concluded that he’s simply erratic, unlike Ben Nelson.
Bayh’s statement explaining his vote is an expression of straight-forward deficit hawkery. But plenty of other Democratic deficit hawks had no trouble voting for the Democratic budget resolution, most notably the Cassandra of Democratic deficit hawks, Blue Dog Congressman Jim Cooper of TN.
The general feeling in the progressive blogosphere is probably best summed up by Steve Benen at Political Animal: “Yes, Bayh is the new Lieberman.” This epithet is made even more piercing by the fact that the actual Joe Lieberman found a way to vote for the Democratic budget resolution.
The more immediate issue for Democrats is that Bayh was the convener of a group of 16 “centrist” Senate Democrats poised to play a key role in the shaping of budget and other legislation for the remainder of this year. The “Bayh group” was already under fierce attack for an alleged willingness to position itself between the two parties and thwart Obama’s policy agenda. Some of us have suggested that these attacks were unfair or at least premature, and have tried to distinguish between “centrists” who do want to stand aside from the Democratic Party and cut deals, and those who don’t.
Bayh’s vote on the budget will provide abundant ammunition to those who want to lump all Democratic “centrists” into the putative-“traitor” camp, even though 14 members of the “Bayh group” voted with the rest of the Democratic Caucus.
Best as I can tell, Bayh’s vote was motivated by a sincere horror of deficits and debt, which is so strong that he doesn’t mind abandoning his party and indeed, his fellow “centrists” on what was, after all, the most epochal budget vote since at least 1993 and probably since 1981. For that very reason, he ought to step back from his leadership role in the Senate “centrist” group, in favor of senators whose agreement with and loyalty to the Obama agenda is much less in question. If this group remains the “Bayh group,” it will struggle to achieve the credibility it needs to become anything other than a crude power bloc looking to shake down the administration and the congressional leadership for personal, ideological, and special-interest favors.

Given the political and policy magnitude of the budget resolutions that cleared the House and Senate yesterday, it’s not surprising that the spin is full on to interpret it. But we’re already seeing some interpretations that appear to be at war with themselves.
Today’s article on the vote in Politico (by David Rogers) carries the somber title: “Budgets Fall Short of Obama Mandates.” But by the second graph, Rogers (who, of course, didn’t write the headline) was saying this:

No Republican in either chamber backed the president, but the 233-196 House vote surpassed the size of budget victories for either party over the last decade. And Democrats lost only two of their members on the 55-43 vote in the Senate.

So: what was it? A historic triumph or a horrible setback?
Dig down into the story, and you’re informed that one problem for Obama is that the Senate did not issue reconciliation instructions, which means the key climate change and health care components of the budget blueprint will be vulnerable to Senate filibusters. But that’s not news. It’s been obvious that Obama’s carbon cap-and-trade initiative wouldn’t benefit from reconciliation treatment ever since eight Senate Democrats signed a letter opposing such a step. Meanwhile, the general expectation is that the House approach of tentatively including health care reform in a reconciliation package (if only as a lever to force Republicans to the table) will be accepted by the Senate in the conference committee negotiations just ahead.
The one real surprise in the Senate deliberations was an amendment increasing the exclusion from the federal estate tax, and lowering the top rate on estates from 45% to 35%. But Obama was already proposing a more modest increase in the exclusion, and the close (51-48) vote itself was only symbolic; the tax-writing committees in both Houses would have to act on it separately. In any event, those with good medium-range memory will recall how recently Congress enacted a complete repeal of what Republicans call “the death tax;” as part of the GOP’s budget gimmickry, however, the repeal was set to sunset on the theory that Congress would not dare reinstate it. So we’ve actually made quite a bit of progress on the estate tax since 2001, even in the unlikely event that the Senate amendment is fully implemented.
All in all, yesterday’s votes were about the best the administration could expect. The “party of No” held its ranks; Democratic defections were low; and Democrats have some momentum going forward–no matter how the headlines read.